Written by: Jordyn Connell, SportWORKS Officer, Sport for Newcomers Charlottetown
Hi Everyone!
This past weekend we held another very successful sporting event! With the help of Basketball PEI and their coaches we held a come try basketball camp for newcomer youth boys at Holland College in Charlottetown. We had just about 50 boys come out to our clinic!
In the morning we invited boys in grades 1-6 to come out and try basketball. For this session we had about 30 boys show up, a few were reluctant and scared to participate at first, but halfway through we had everyone participating and having fun. The Basketball PEI coach running the session started off by teaching the group the fundamental skills of basketball, doing dribbling and shooting drills, teaching them how to do layups, and even threw in some more challenging skills for the boys to try out, and some did very well with them. He had the group play some relay games, and wrapped up the session splitting the group into 4 teams and playing two half court games of basketball. This allowed the boys to apply the skills they had learned earlier in the clinic into a game situation.
In the afternoon, we had a group of older boys, grades 7-12 come in for our afternoon session. We had about 20 boys show up for this session. Since it was an older group and it seemed as though a few had played basketball before, the Basketball PEI coach had this group doing more complex skills right from the start since many were already familiar with the basics. They ran through layups, dribbling and shooting drills, and were able to add a few more layers to their skills. This group also ran through offensive/defensive drills. Like the morning group, this group was split into four teams to play a game, only this time the group was playing full court games. The coach had them playing “king of the court” style games, two teams started and the first to score stayed on the court and the next team waiting would come on to play them and they continued to play this game till the end of the session.
This basketball clinic we held over the weekend was the most successful event we’ve had yet, the numbers were good and the participation from the boys was good as well. Another successful event under our belts, thanks to Basketball PEI and their coaches as well as our participants. We are planning a similar basketball event for newcomer girls on June 3rd so stay tuned!
Jordyn